Emma Lew

b. 1962, Melbourne

Emma Lew is a poet. In previous lives she has worked as a deckhand, shop assistant, proof-reader and clerical assistant, only beginning to write poetry in 1993. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies in Australia and internationally. Her first volume of poems, The Wild Reply, won the 1998 Mary Gilmore Prize and was joint winner of The Age 1998 Poetry Book of the Year Prize. Her second book, Anything the Landlord Touches, published in 2002 and reissued in the UK by Shearsman Books in 2006, won the 2003 C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry (Victorian Premier's Prize) and the 2003 Judith Wright Calanthe Prize for Poetry (Queensland Premier's Prize). A collection of German language translations of her selected poems, Nesselgesang, was published in 2008 (translations by Mirko Bonne).